With an additional advantage of a target market and so many digital requirements, the Netherlands is stepping towards becoming one of the world’s strongest tech markets with some best startups in its pool of offerings.
After Amsterdam, Eindhoven, and Delft, one more city that’s taking massive advantage of this scenario is Utrecht, which is famous not only for cutting-edge innovations but also for the most sustainable living environment. This city has reportedly more than 100 startups in life sciences, healthcare and medical technology, gaming, cleantech and IT.
Also, there are initiatives like the municipal Startup Inresidence, Local Economic Fund, Utrecht incubators UtrechtInc., Dutch Game Garden, StudentsInc., Life Science Incubator and Venturebuilder Holland Startup which support the startups and scaleups.
Further, there’s Graduate Space which offers housing and community for scaleups and there’s also Startup Utrecht, a regional partnership, that works to stimulate the startup ecosystem in the region by bringing startups into contact with talent, corporates, and sources of financing.
Today at Silicon Canals, we have picked the 10 innovative tech startup based out of Utrecht that you need to know about. Take a look at it below.
#1 Energyworx
Founded by Edwin Poot in 2012, EnergyWorx is a SaaS platform for energy data management and energy intelligence solutions. Headquartered in Utrecht, this company designs and develops software that helps its users to balance and optimize the grid and reduce losses during transmission and distribution.
Backed by henQ, Energyworx is a privately held global company with the office also in San Francisco. In addition to it, the company offers other services including meter data management, social energy app, energy balancing for smart grids and data hub. Till now, the startup has raised €1 million Series A funding and looks forward to growing more globally.
#2 SnappCar
Currently serving in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark, the SnappCar is a peer-to-peer car sharing community that provides a service for sharing private cars, ranging from matching cars and drivers to payment and insurance. Basically, it’s an Uber of self-driving sharing cars. The company aims is to decrease the total number of privately-owned cars in Europe by sharing the cars in a particular community or locality. Founded by Pascal Ontijd, Victor van Tol in 2011, the company has raised around €15M in funding in more than 10 rounds.
#3 Proov
Proov is a sustainable startup by Arnaud van der Sluis which provides wireless charging systems for electric buses. The ambition of Proov is to provide economically attractive unplugged e-mobility solutions for professional transport in all cities of the Netherlands by 2020. Further, Proov also supplies sustainable charging systems for buses in London. Established in 2011, the company also acquired German company IPT a few years ago and is actively involved in the factories of Volkswagen and Porsche to drive wireless charging carts of almost completed cars.
#4 Friss
The Utrecht based SaaS supplier, Friss provides analytic software that focuses on automated fraud and risk detection for P&C insurance companies worldwide. This platform is a ready-to-use business solution, improves the insurers’ loss ratios by identifying high risks and fraud at quotation with AI-powered detection solutions. Founded by Jeroen Morrenhof in 2006, this company has raised funding around €15M so far.
#5 United Wardrobe
With the early VC funding of €1 million so far Dutch startup United Wardrobe has a unique concept with more than 1.1million users reportedly. It is basically a social marketplace for the safe buying and selling of second-hand clothing, shoes, and accessories and the largest marketplace of its kind in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Founded in 2014, this Utrecht-based startup has three founders — Thijs Verheul (marketing and PR), Sjuul Berden (finance and concept development) and Joep Dohmen (ICT and support). All three are students of Business and Consumer Science at Wageningen University. As per the reports and recent funding, the company is now working on the international expansion.
#6 Blendle
Dutch startup Blendle is like the Spotify of journalism. Launched in April 2014, the startup aims at allowing readers to pay per article published by major publishers instead of subscribing to it for a month. This platform sells article from most of the major Dutch papers, as well as from some Belgian publishers, and magazines. Blendle has 1,000,000 users (as of August 2016) in the Netherlands, Germany, and the US. Founded by Alexander Klöpping and Marten Blankesteijn, this company has raised funding around €7 million in three rounds since 2014.
#7 Gitlab
Founded by Dmitriy Zaporozhets and Sytse Sijbrandij, GitLab is a fierce rival to Github, which was recently acquired by tech giant Microsoft. The Dutch startup is an open-source code collaboration platform that lets the developer create, review, and deploy code bases. This platform includes Git repository management, code reviews, issue tracking, wikis, along with a continuous integration and deployment tool called “GitLab CI.” This company has raised around $41.5M so far and already has big clients in its kitty including NASA, CERN, Alibaba, SpaceX, O’Reilly, IBM, and Expedia.
#8 Watermelon
While Watermelon went bankrupt last year, the ‘best young entrepreneurs of 2016′, Utrecht’s Alexander Wijninga and Charl Haas launched new customer service platform for businesses dubbed as – again – Watermelon. Using AI technology, the platform provides quicker and satisfactory answers to your customer’s questions.
In addition, the messenger allows you to add different social media channels including Facebook Messenger, Telegram, chat, and email from one dashboard and help you to keep track of your customer service outside office hours as well.
Watermelon uses the so-called ‘chatbot technology’ which allows an automated employee to talk to customers quickly and answer hundreds of questions simultaneously. Headquartered at Utrecht, this company was founded in 2016 in an attempt to create a smooth and happy relationship between the customers.
#9 Merus
Once started as a startup, Merus is now one of the leading biotech companies in the Netherlands. Merus develops immunotherapies for cancer, a new generation of drugs that activate the natural immune system of humans.
Founded by Ton Logtenberg in 2003, the company develops Oligoclonics, which involves in a mixing of various human therapeutic antibodies, directed to a common antigen are produced from a single cell clone. So far, the company has raised funding amount around €149 million in more than 8 rounds as per Dealroom.
#10 GreenPeak
GreenPeak is a fabless semiconductor company and is reportedly has expertise in battery-free communication technology for wireless sense and control applications. This revolutionary technology utilizes energy harvesting to facilitate battery-free operation in a totally wireless environment, without the need for either communications or power connectivity.
GreenPeak is based in Utrecht – The Netherlands and has offices in Belgium, Japan, Korea and the USA. GreenPeak is backed by venture capitalists: DJF Esprit (UK), Gimv (Belgium), Motorola Ventures (USA) and Allegro Investment Fund (Belgium) and has raided €28.3 million funding so far.
With such high-tech startups in its kitty, Utrecht is definitely prospering constantly to become a major tech startup hub for the Netherlands. What do you think about these startups? Do you know any startup we’re missing in the list, do let us know in the comments section below.
Stay tuned to Silicon Canals for more updates in the tech startup world.
